


i've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard

by skywalkwithme



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Trauma, more fun angst to come
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 06:19:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16928058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skywalkwithme/pseuds/skywalkwithme
Summary: Sam can see in his face the hardness of the stones of Mordor- the dark bruises under his eyes, the sharpness of his jaw and cheekbones where the flesh thinned, the faint line of a cut on his chin where a rock struck him. And as Frodo's thumb goes in slow circles over the Ring's old place on his breast, that small, whitened callus, Sam knows he's there, still, treading through the smoke and fire.there and back again- but it's back that's the trick.





	i've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard

**Author's Note:**

> title is from a hard rain's a gonna fall by bob dylan

Sam wakes up.

His first impression is that he feels nothing- nor his legs nor his arms- it's as if he's floating, suspended in a strange white softness.

Then he realizes- he's in a bed. His arms and legs are there, yes, but strangely numb, and the covers and sheets as light and delicate as air. He shifts, slightly, and wiggles his toes- they're stiff.

Wrapped in something- bandages. Bandages? What's he done to his-

Then he remembers, images tumbling over each other like rocks in a current- the Mountain, the Cracks of Doom, fire and boulders and sliding lava-

Where's Frodo?

He's not beside him, not curled in his cloak like he had been for countless past nights- where- he sits up, gaze flicking around a small room of pale, clean stone, and a bed next to him, white, with a small, hunched figure with dark hair-

He's up, pushing himself off the bed, and his bandaged feet hit the floor and he feels pain shoot up and he stumbles, his legs not working like they're supposed to. But he's across, pulling himself up onto his bed, fists in the sheets.

"Frodo- Master Frodo!"

He's here, he's alive, his pulse beating in the hollow of his throat. Frodo's face is relaxed, his dark eyelashes laid down on his cheeks, but he inhales and his mouth opens when Sam speaks, and he blinks awake.

"Sam-" his voice is hoarse, almost a whisper.

His hands come up and grip Sam's shirt, clasp his face, and Sam curls his arms around his shoulders, feeling the flesh and blood of him.

"Sam- I thought-"

"I know-"

Frodo presses his forehead to Sam's, and he's warm and so real, and he smells like soap and skin. 

"We were on Mount Doom- I had-" Frodo's voice is thin, as though he's pushing it out of the depth of his lungs. "Gollum- Sam-"

He looks past Sam's shoulder at their room, and Sam does too. "Where are we?"

It's narrow, high-ceilinged, with walls built of square fitted stones, with one upright window. They've been given two beds, too high for hobbits, with fine white sheets. And they're both in white- too-big linen shirts and pants. "I reckon I don't know."

"Not-" Frodo pauses, his voice trying him. "Not orcs, anyhow."

Sam smiles, and Frodo brings one hand up to his face, then pauses- the hand is mittened with bandages, his fingers wrapped stiffly together. And the first finger is much shorter than the rest.

Frodo's brows draw together, and Sam notices for the first time the sharp way the bones stand out from his face. "The Ring- Sam-"

"You destroyed it." He remembers- the fire, and the blood, and the heat and smoke and pain, all blending together into one. But he remembers, too- when the Ring fell, and Gollum with it, how, a moment later, he felt like a hand had released itself from around his heart, how tears that had been behind his eyes for weeks and days began to fall free. 

"But, Sam- I didn't, Sam-" Frodo's face pinches, and Sam smoothes his thumb across his cheek. He's about to think of something to say, something to ease him, when Frodo's gaze flicks away, and his eyes narrow and then widen.

"Gandalf!"

Sam turns, and it is Gandalf, all in white too and tall and strong as a sturdy oak, the sunlight bathing him like liquid. "Good morning." he says. 

"Where- how-"

"You are in Gondor, in Minas Tirith, and it is March the twenty-ninth. The Ring is destroyed. Your quest is done." Gandalf is beaming, with such shimmering pride. He begins to say something else, when the door behind him bursts open.

"Frodo! Sam!" And it's Merry and Pippin, clambering up onto the bed, all feet and elbows and wide-eyed grins, and them here was more than Sam dared hope, and they're hugging, gripping hands, and falling all over each other with talk- "You did it, you did it, we always knew- never thought I'd see you- all back in one piece-together again-"

Gandalf stands, and laughs and laughs, and Frodo does too, but Sam, all caught up in joy as he is, doesn't miss the rasp of Frodo's laugh, or the tight way he holds his jaw.

\-----

There's greetings, and greetings, and greetings again- Merry and Pippin, and Aragorn and Legolas and Gimli, and food brought, and the telling of tales. Sam eats great helpings of soup and good bread and meat, and listens as Merry and Pippin tell their tales, and his heart trembles as he thinks of them, captured by orcs and fighting. Then, when their tale is finished, their gazes come to rest on Sam and Frodo.

"So?" says Merry. "How'd you do it?'

Sam looks to Frodo, but he glances away. Pippin frowns, catching this, but Sam takes it up. "Well-"

He starts from the beginning, with Boromir's death, and takes them, haltingly, through the marshes, meeting Gollum, Faramir, through the wastes.

But, with Merry and Pippin so bright-eyed across the table, and Gandalf resplendent, and Aragorn and Legolas and Gimli so- so royal, somehow, he- well, he leaves out the bad parts.

Not the parts where they were in danger, or hurting, or so hungry and tired he fair wanted to cry. But the parts, well, when the Ring was strongest over Frodo. When Frodo told him, that gleam in his eyes, his face twisted and his hand clenched over the Ring hanging at his heart, to go, to go home and leave him, Sam pauses.

"And we- we got sep'rated, you see. By the doings of Gollum. Frodo got led off one way when I was too far behind. So Gollum took him away- into Shelob's lair."

He glances sideways at Frodo, and Frodo turns his face down and away, his black curls hiding his eyes. He looks down at his hands, his whole and his bandaged one.

"Shelob?" barks Gimli, and Sam picks the tale back up. 

"Yes- see, a giant old spider-"

So the Fellowship follows them down through Mordor, in Sam's telling. When Frodo snatched the Ring away from Sam with hungry hands in the tower of Cirith Ungol- well, no need including that part, not even important, really. But they climb up the mountain, up to the Cracks of Doom, and-

"There was a ledge, over this great lake of fire. And so hot, as though you were inside an oven right down near the coals. And so we walked across that ledge, Frodo with the Ring, each step dreadful hard, as though we was walking through molasses. The evil was so thick in the air it hurt to breathe. And when we got to the ledge, when Frodo was at the very end-"

Frodo's hands knit in his lap, and a muscle moves in his jaw. Sam still can't see his eyes, but he remembers them as they were- so strange and distant, through the shimmering air, lit by a new and awful light, as he held the Ring in his hands like his own soul.

"He cast it away, into the fires. And it fell down, far, and was gone. And- just before it fell, Gollum, that villain- he threw himself down after it. And so they were both destroyed, just like that. 

So we got out, as the tower started to fall, all them rocks tumbling down, and the fires shooting. And we waited, out on the mountain. Thinkin' it was the end."

Aragorn shakes his head in wonder, and Gimli slaps the table and chortles. Merry and Pippin start both talking at once- "I felt it, I felt the minute it landed in the fire-" Pippin says.

"Mighty strong, the pair o ye-" says Gimli.

"You have proved yourselves, beyond all men." Aragorn says quietly.

Sam smiles, but he looks to Frodo, and though he looks up at Aragorn and smiles too, his eyes are far away, his smile tight.

\-----

They shuffle back to their room. Sam's legs still feel like they're made of wood, but they hold him up. He keeps a hand on Frodo's arm, as Frodo looks whiter than he ought, and, without the grime of Mordor on him, he realizes how thin his face has become.

Frodo hauls himself up on the too-tall bed, and shuffles aside for Sam to get up next to him. He's in the fine clothing they had given him for the feast, stiff with gold thread, and Sam reaches for the buttons on his doublet. "Let me-"

But Frodo turns away, undoing them himself, and casts the vest over his head and tucks himself down in the blankets. 

"Master Frodo?" he says.

Frodo doesn't answer. When Sam turns to look at him, his eyes are shut. Perhaps he's asleep, though somehow Sam doesn't think so. He feels worry settle inside him like silt in a pond. But Master Frodo isn't up to talking right now, and he's tired too. Perhaps what they need is a good sleep. So he lies down next to him, inches away but not touching, knees pointed the other direction, trying to ignore his concerns as they filter through his mind. 

\---

It's night, and the room is flooded blue, the only light the cast of the moon through the window. Sam has been sliding in and out of sleep for what feels like an age, and he's floating between awakeness and sleep when he's roused by Frodo sitting up.

He's still caught in a daze, and watches dimly as Frodo reaches his hand in the opening of his linen shirt to run his finger over the spot the Ring lay on his breastbone, where, as Sam knows, a small, whitened callous lies. The moonlight lies in soft-edged patches over the side of his face, lighting his brow and catching the space just under his eye. Frodo's face is relaxed, his eyes still dim with sleep and his hair curling carelessly over his brow. Sam can see in his face the hardness of the stones of Mordor- the dark bruises under his eyes, the sharpness of his jaw and cheekbones where the flesh thinned, the faint line of a cut on his chin where a rock struck him. and as Frodo's thumb goes in slow circles over the Ring's place on his breast, Sam knows he's there, still, treading through the smoke and fire.

Sam sits up. "Can't sleep?"

Frodo looks over. "No." His eyes are flat, unknowable in the dark.

Sam covers his worry with practicality. "Bed's too soft, it is. Been sleeping on the ground the last weeks and they put us on feathers. Here, we'll take these blankets down on the floor. It's clean, it is."

So Frodo stands while Sam pulls the sheets and pillows off the bed to arrange them on the flagstones. Sam lies down first, shifting his shoulders to check it's comfort. And it's not, terribly, but of course that's the point. 

Frodo is still standing there, waiflike in his loose shirt, so Sam moves to the side, but opens up his arm for Frodo to lie down with him. He still stands, looking down at him, shirt blowing in the cool air.

"Come to bed, Frodo." says Sam.

And finally he does, laying down in the crook of Sam's arm, pulling the blankets over them both, and Sam curls around his back like he did all through the marshes and the Morgul Vale. 

They lie there.

"How's this, then?" Sam asks.

"Better." says Frodo. He's strangely still in Sam's arms.

"I was thinkin' of our first night away from home, when we still hadn't left the Shire. When all I wanted was my own soft bed at home, not to be lyin' on the ground on the dirt and roots. And now here we are again with soft beds, and we've got to get down on the floor for some sleep." Sam chuckles.

He waits for Frodo to respond, but he's silent. "Master Frodo?"

Then Frodo turns around under the blanket suddenly. "Sam." Frodo's eyes are blue and hollow. "The story- you didn't tell it right."

"I told it as best I could, Master Frodo." Sam falters.

"You know what I mean, Sam. You left out- when I told you- and at the Cracks-"

Sam hesitates. "That weren't you, Master Frodo, that was the Ring in you. No need to tell them about the doings of the Ring, they know it's evil well enough."

Frodo's hand tightens around his. "But, Sam- it was me."

"It weren't-"

"It was!" Frodo's voice is the loudest it's been since he woke up. "Sam, it was. I wanted the Ring, I wanted it so terribly- and- and I hated you, Sam-"

Sam clasps his face, but Frodo pushes his hand away. "The things I thought, Sam, the things I thought about you-"

"The Ring put them there, it did-"

"I could have fought it. I could have, that's why it was given to me. Gandalf thought I was strong enough to bear it, to carry it. But I wasn't- I failed, I failed him, and I failed you." Frodo's face is tight, stiff with pain. "How can you stay with me, after all I did?"

"It en't matter to me. None of it." Frodo is sitting up, so Sam does too.

"The things I thought, Sam, the things I did. I thought you wanted the Ring, I never wanted to see you again, I believed the things Gollum said- I wanted you to leave us, to be taken by Orcs, anything to leave me with the Ring." Frodo seems desperate, almost, to convince Sam.

"It's all over, now, Frodo, it's behind us."

"I didn't destroy the Ring. It was all I had to do and I couldn't do it, it was only by accident that the Ring fell-"

"But it did fall. It did fall, and it was destroyed, so it en't matter how it were done. We got it up to Mount Doom and it fell into the fire, and how it fell in is neither here nor there." Sam takes Frodo's chin in his hand and turns it towards him.

"But the journey, Sam-"

"I forgive you." Sam says staunchly.

Frodo looks at him, eyes two holes. "Sam-" he says, his soft, fire-burnt voice scarcely more than a whisper.

"I forgive you." he says again, squaring his shoulders.

Frodo lowers his face and presses it into the crook of his shoulder, and Sam turns his head to press his lips into his tangled hair. 

Frodo's words hum through the bones of his shoulder. "How can you forgive me when I can't forgive myself?"

"It en't no use fussing over what's done. It's done and we're both here, and in one piece, mostly." he says into the smooth skin of his neck. "So I forgive you."

Sam feels Frodo's breath against his neck- then an indistinct tickle which he thinks is Frodo pressing his clothed shoulder a kiss. "Let's get some sleep, Sam."

So they curl up on their mess of blankets like refugees, Frodo's head on Sam's breast. And Sam, tired as he is, begins to fade into sleep, but as his eyes dim, he thinks Frodo's are still open.

**Author's Note:**

> i have an exaaaaaam in two daaaaaaaays and all i can think about is lotr!!!!!! HELP


End file.
